"Justice Kagan said she could not understand why the Orleans Parish District Attorney’s Office persisted in defending its conduct. “Did your office ever consider just confessing error in this case?” she asked.
Justice Sotomayor made a broader point about the office, which has repeatedly been found to have violated Brady v. Maryland, the 1963 Supreme Court decision that requires prosecutors to turn over favorable evidence to the defense.
“There have been serious accusations against the practices of your office, not yours in particular, but prior ones,” Justice Sotomayor said. “It is disconcerting to me that when I asked you the question directly, should this material have been turned over, you gave an absolute no.”
“That’s really troubling,” Justice Sotomayor added."
REPORTER ADAM LIPTAK: THE NEW YORK TIMES.
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PUBLISHER'S NOTE: : This blog is particularly interested in the Juan Smith case because of the deplorable record of the Orlean's Parish District Attorney's office in disclosing exculpatory evidence to the accused - including important forensic evidence. In the John Thompson case, after Thompson had been put on death row a private investigator hired by his lawyer found a blood test in the police lab that showed the man wanted for a related carjacking had type B blood, while Thompson's was type O. Thompson had been charged with and convicted of an attempted carjacking near the Superdome as a prelude to charging him with the unsolved murder of a hotel executive. The newly revealed blood test spared Thompson's life, and a judge ordered a new trial on the murder charge that had sent him to death row. His new defense lawyers found other evidence that had been hidden, including eyewitnesses reports. Bystanders reported seeing a man who was 6 feet tall with close-cropped hair running away holding a gun. Thompson was 5 feet 8 and had a bushy Afro. With the new eyewitness reports and other evidence that pointed to another man as the killer, Thompson was quickly acquitted of all the charges in a second trial. (Information from the L.A. Times); I find it hard to imagine worse prosecutorial misconduct than withholding key exculpatory forensic evidence from a person facing the death penalty if convicted (as in the Thompson case) - or holding back from the defence information that a crucial eyewitness had made conflicting statements (as in the Juan Smith case); For shame.
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"WASHINGTON — Donna R. Andrieu, an assistant district attorney in New Orleans, had the unenviable task at the Supreme Court on Tuesday of defending her office’s conduct in withholding evidence from a criminal defendant. She made the least of it," the New York Times story by reporter Adam Liptak published on November 8, 2011 begins, under the heading, "Judges rebuke a new Orleans prosecutor."
"Her halting and unfocused presentation elicited one incredulous question after another. The argument culminated in back-to-back rebukes from Justices Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor," the story continues.
"Justice Kagan said she could not understand why the Orleans Parish District Attorney’s Office persisted in defending its conduct. “Did your office ever consider just confessing error in this case?” she asked.
Justice Sotomayor made a broader point about the office, which has repeatedly been found to have violated Brady v. Maryland, the 1963 Supreme Court decision that requires prosecutors to turn over favorable evidence to the defense.
“There have been serious accusations against the practices of your office, not yours in particular, but prior ones,” Justice Sotomayor said. “It is disconcerting to me that when I asked you the question directly, should this material have been turned over, you gave an absolute no.”
“That’s really troubling,” Justice Sotomayor added.
The case, Smith v. Cain, No. 10-8145, arose from a mass murder in 1995, when a group of men burst into a house in search of money and drugs. They ordered the occupants to lie down and opened fire, killing five people.
Juan Smith was the only person tried for the killings. He was convicted based solely on the eyewitness testimony of a survivor, Larry Boatner. Prosecutors presented no DNA, fingerprint, weapons or other physical evidence.
Unknown to Mr. Smith’s lawyers, Mr. Boatner had said conflicting things in interviews with the police. Just after the shootings, he said he could not describe the intruders except to say they were black men. A few hours later, he mentioned “a black male with a low cut, gold in his mouth,” a description that matched Mr. Smith and five other suspects.
Five days later, Mr. Boatner told a police officer that he had not seen the intruders’ faces and could not identify them.
Ms. Andrieu said the failure to turn Mr. Boatner’s statements over to the defense did not violate the Brady decision because the jury would have discounted them. Almost every justice appeared to disagree.
Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. said, “If you were the defense lawyer, you really would like to have that statement where he said: ‘I couldn’t identify them.’ ”
Justice Antonin Scalia said of the evidence, “Of course it should have been turned over.”
As her argument wound down, Ms. Andrieu retreated slightly, saying that a prudent prosecutor might have voluntarily turned over the materials. “Today we turn over all of this,” she said.
Kannon K. Shanmugam, a lawyer for Mr. Smith, was questioned only lightly. He said the Brady violations in the case had been flagrant and egregious."
The story can be found at:http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/09/us/supreme-court-rebukes-a-new-orleans-prosecutor.html?_r=1
PUBLISHER'S NOTE: The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. The Star has a "topic" section which focuses on recent stories related to Dr. Charles Smith. It can be found at:
http://www.thestar.com/topic/charlessmith
Information on "The Charles Smith Blog Award"- and its nomination process - can be found at:
http://smithforensic.blogspot.com/2011/05/charles-smith-blog-award-nominations.html
Harold Levy: Publisher; The Charles Smith Blog; hlevy15@gmail.com;
